Paul
Goble
Staunton, March 23 – The Russian
Federation has acquired many problems by its annexation of Crimea –
international opprobrium, the eternal hostility of Ukrainians, and the
prospective costs of running the place, to name just three – but it has also “gained”
one few expected – a dramatic boost in the number of criminal groups now within
its borders.
Indeed, according to Sergey Kanyev,
a journalist at “Novaya gazeta,” the level of crime is so high and the
complicity of the authorities so great that most residents of Crimea, just like
many residents of Russian rural areas, “for serious help more often turn not to
law enforcement organs but to criminal authorities” (novayagazeta.ru/inquests/62831.html?print=1).
And
there is a widespread fear that Moscow-ordered efforts to clean up the
peninsula will not result in a strengthening of the police and prosecutors but
rather, as has been the case elsewhere, in more violence among the organized
criminal groups, greater exploitation of the population, and a dramatic
increase in the size of bribes and acts of intimidation.
For most
Russians, Crimea retains its image as a resort area, Kanyev says, but it is
also a place of serious criminal activity and complicit police. He reports that
experts now say that „the Crimean force structures are almost totally corrupt,
and some of their employees work de facto for commercial strucutres, narcotics
traffickers or the criminal authorities.“
Not
surprisingly, this has resulted in violence as the criminal groups fight among
themselves for control and are not afraid to kill local officials, thus
creating a situation which local residents say is even worse than anything in
the wild 1990s that Moscow has worked to overcome. In sum, crime isn’t well-organized and
institutionalized; it is still very violent.
The
criminal groups in Crimea appeared at hte end of Soviet times and at first at
least consisted primarily of „students at Crimean higher educational
institutions, former boxers and fighters.“
They took over businesses and engaged in a variety of rackets,
especially in the years when ethnic Russians controlled the Autonomous Republic
of Crimea.
Even
when at the insistence of Kyiv the police have tried to move against them, the
latter have been unsuccessful. Many of those against whom charges have been
filed are still at large, either still in Crimea or in the Russian Federation. Without
a wholesale cleansing, that is unlikely to change, as the region’s criminal
groups have links with other such groups in Russia.
The
existing structure of the interior ministry of the Republic of Crimea „is
practically indistiguishable“ from those found in a Russian region, Kanyev
says. The major difference is that the
Crimean MVD has not disbanded the Administration for the Struggle with
Organized Crime as the Russian ones have under Vladimir Putin.
But that
institution is poorly equipped to carry out the fight: it lacks the technical
equipment it needs and its ranks are thoroughly compromise. Many in Crimea expect the new Russian
occupiers to try to clean things up but believe that will lead only to more
bribery and a new fight over the division of property and criminal activities.
And they fear that the high level of crime in the
area won’t change anytime soon. Last year, there were 8.2 murders for every
100,000 residents in Sevastopol, compared to 3.7 in Kyiv and 3.8 in Lviv. And
Crimea’s distinctiveness in this regard was true for other major crimes as
well.
By annexing Crimea, Moscow has
absorbed these problems within its borders, problems that the Russian-dominated
autonomy allowed to develop despite Kyiv’s efforts and ones that are certain to
make life worse for ordinary Russians even as they contribute to the further
enrichment of organized criminal groups in the Russian Federation.
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